I bought my M1 Macbook Air 8GB this weekend and today I used it for the first time for coding. It was only to learn SwiftUI and it took about 2 hours. It wasn’t performance demanding thing just tested layouts and stuff. After 2 hours I picked the macbook up and it was really really hot on the bottom like burning hot. I didn’t use any emulator and stuff just preview on the side. And the battery kinda drained it was 83% when I started and it was at 30% after 2 hours. I used it on my large mousepad. Is it possible that my mousepad prevented air flow and thats what heated up the thing or is this normal to heat up like this or do i have to contact for apple for a warranty? Should I be worried about the battery performance and heating?
Well, I always thought the 8GB Air is just not made for tasks that put pressure on the chip for a longer period of time. There are people out there that actually get things done but this is in fact a consumer not a professional laptop. I made the “mistake” myself before buying an Intel Air for, which I thought, lighter tasks in Adobe CC that just couldn’t stand up the tasks. Sure Apple Silicon can handle it better but still not as good as a MacBook from the Pro series.
For monitoring your temperatures you should look into TGPro … this is awesome to actually see the temps of pretty much all of the components of your Mac.
From my understanding this a a curse of the M1 Mac Air’s… there is no venting for the air’s that I am aware of so when you begin to “work” on the Air as it heats the warm air being generated around the chip has no where to go since it have no vents or fan. So it overheats super easy… I work in Graphic Design and that was what swayed my decision to get a M1 MacBook Pro instead of the Air cause I knew I would be putting my Mac thru the ringer running all my various apps and what not.
A laptop fan cooler pad will also help because it will help disperse the accumulated heat from the aluminium base. If you don’t like that option by any reason you can also get a pair of rubber feet or a stand. MBA will never be great on high demanding tasks for long periods of time because it’s only passively cooled